Will State Route 520 toll make bridge backups mostly a thing of the past?

Last Thurs­day, after months of delays, the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (WSDOT) final­ly began tolling the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge over Lake Wash­ing­ton. Col­lec­tion of the toll (which is vari­able) began in the ear­ly morn­ing with no fan­fare or cer­e­mo­ny. Since that hour, there has been a cost to use the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge dur­ing day­light hours, and there will con­tin­ue to be for decades — per­haps indef­i­nite­ly, if tolling replaces the gas tax as a major rev­enue source for main­tain­ing roads and bridges.

WSDOT’s plan­ners had antic­i­pat­ed that usage of the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge would decline fol­low­ing the impo­si­tion of the toll, and they were correct:

Traf­fic was light Thurs­day, typ­i­cal for the week between the Christ­mas and New Year’s hol­i­days. Dri­vers appeared to shift their com­mute to alter­nate routes after toll col­lec­tions began. On the SR 520 float­ing bridge, traf­fic vol­umes were about 45 per­cent low­er com­pared to ear­li­er this week. Traf­fic vol­umes on the Inter­state 90 bridge and on SR 522 were some­what high­er than nor­mal for the hol­i­day week. Trav­el times were not notice­ably affected.

“This is about what we expect­ed,” [Toll Divi­sion Direc­tor Craig] Stone said. “We know peo­ple are test­ing new routes to avoid the new tolled bridge. This is also a hol­i­day week so over­all traf­fic is unusu­al­ly light. We want to make sure dri­vers are pre­pared for Jan. 3, when peo­ple head back to work and school is back in ses­sion. We expect to see a very dif­fer­ent traf­fic pic­ture then.”

Today is Jan­u­ary 3rd. The morn­ing com­mute is already over. So how was the traf­fic on the alter­na­tive routes? As it turns out not bad. 

The Seat­tle Times reports that con­ges­tion on I‑90 and SR 522, traf­fic was­n’t much worse than it is ordi­nar­i­ly is. Traf­fic vol­ume on SR 520 was down, as expect­ed, which made for faster trav­el times.

The evening com­mute is now about to get started.

What I’m curi­ous to see is whether the toll will make the Great Lake Wash­ing­ton Line­up (also known as the Kirk­land Crawl) a thing of the past.

I just came back across Lake Wash­ing­ton from Seat­tle less than an hour ago, and the bridge was eeri­ly emp­ty. Nor­mal­ly, around mid­day on a week­day, it’s busy. Not packed, but busy. Today, though? There was nobody any­where near me. Nobody. I felt like I could have coast­ed to a stop, parked, stepped out­side, and walked around… and I would­n’t have been in any­body’s way!

Before I set off, I set up a dash­cam so I could get a pic­ture while mak­ing my way across the bridge. Here’s what the view was like:

As you can see, it was wide open.

The bridge won’t be wide open dur­ing rush hour. But if it’s only busy, rather than packed (as it has been for years), that will great­ly cut down on delays… and pos­si­bly elim­i­nate the Great Lake Wash­ing­ton Line­up as we know it.

For those who reg­u­lar­ly use State Route 520 to get into or out of Seat­tle, the speed­i­er trav­el times will be a real bless­ing. That goes for Sound Tran­sit and Metro rid­ers as well as dri­vers. With few­er back­ups and delays, the 542 and 545 Express­es (among oth­er routes) will become more reli­able, which will increase their popularity.

I‑90, mean­while, will like­ly be more crowd­ed at all hours of the day, since it also goes across the lake and runs par­al­lel to 520. Get­ting on or off Mer­cer Island may cer­tain­ly become more chal­leng­ing that it has been in the past dur­ing rush hour.

But tak­ing I‑90 isn’t the only way to avoid the toll. Some peo­ple will avoid pay­ing it by tak­ing tran­sit. Oth­ers may use State Route 522. And still oth­ers will sim­ply reduce the num­ber of cross-lake trips they make.

Toll­pay­ers, mean­while, will enjoy a more reli­able commute.